You’ve no doubt heard of paranoia, the feeling someone is out to hurt you. I’ve even blogged about it. But have you ever heard of pronoia? Psychologist Brian Little defines it as: “The delusional belief that other people are plotting your well-being or saying nice things about you behind your back.”
Maybe it doesn’t have to be delusional. Could it be controlled and perceived as reaping what you sow? I’ve been on the receiving end of what I interpret as pronoia. Someone actually WAS plotting my well-being and saying nice things about me behind my back to someone with the power to change my situation.
Pronoia is a foreign concept because we’re much more likely to notice and discuss negative behaviors than positive ones. Why is that? Why is it we hear and repeat the negative? Why is that more attractive than hearing and repeating the positive?
Because it’s easy; it makes us feel important by being the one “in the know.” Even descriptions of negative impacting words are cooler than positive ones: Juicy gossip; spill the tea (gossip is NOT worth your T.E.A. btw) vs. sweet nothings and honeyed words. Wouldn’t we benefit more by training ourselves to choose to have hope, trust, and faith in our coworkers? Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. says doing so makes us more inclined to have a disposition of optimism and resilience and not just at work. He also lists the problems of taking it too far, so let’s balance pronoia with healthy skepticism.
Let’s look for hints of the best in our coworkers and entice it out of them. If someone is being difficult, let’s assume it’s a symptom of a problem and investigate instead of assuming she just has a difficult personality. Call it what you want: Karma, paying it forward, or just plain practicing kindness, but let’s steer our companies’ cultures toward empathy. It can only benefit the team.
If the Beatles were right, and the love you take is indeed equal to the love you make, will plotting our coworkers well-being increase our chances of being on the receiving end of pronoia? What does this look like at work? We can assume our teammate isn’t trying to dump an unwanted project on us, but just needs a hand. That attitude improves our mindsets more than hers. Remember to set boundaries though. For example: Once the project is doable for our coworker, stop helping. Be a pronoia instigator. Did someone in another department give us a viable sales lead? Send an email to his manager. Has the team hired a new member? Take her to lunch and answer her onboarding questions. Does the intern need help polishing his resume? Give it the once over.
Expecting the best from people doesn’t change them. It actually changes us. It causes us to treat our coworkers differently. Think of it as the Golden Rule on steroids.
What do you do at work to spread pronoia? Please share your suggestions in the comments section below.